00:20these fighters were one of the most modern and best performing Italian designs when they appeared.
00:26But early decisions in their development and their weak construction hampered their performance.
00:31They still participated in numerous engagements and were used in many different roles during the war.
00:37These were the Regiane Re 2000 and Re 2001 fighters. So let's see the history of these planes today.
00:53During the 1930s, many new aircraft was developed in Italy and entered service with the Regia Aeronautica.
00:59As the Italians, just like other military powers around the world, followed the changes in the
01:04aviation industry before World War II. Many fighter families appeared during this decade and their
01:10development paths followed very similar directions, influenced by technological developments,
01:15ministry directives and the political events.
01:19The main changes in aviation technology happened in the middle of the 1930s,
01:24so even though the Fiat CR-32 biplane just entered service in 1934,
01:29two years later the DGCA already issued new specifications for more advanced fighter planes.
01:35Not surprisingly, the urgent need for faster, more capable interceptors was caused by the appearance
01:40of new modern bombers, which as it turned out were faster than the traditional biplane fighters.
01:47This also caused the new bombers to feature very light defensive armament.
01:51As many designers falsely imagined, these new fast planes will simply outrun the fighters.
01:56But if you want to know more about this topic, we have already looked at many of the bombers of
02:00the time,
02:01like the Heinkel HG-111, the Savoia Marchetti SM-79, or the Kant Z-1007.
02:08You can find links to these videos in the description.
02:12Following the new trends in aviation, the new requirements as for fighter designs,
02:16which had to be low-wing monoplanes, feature retractable undercarriage,
02:20and be capable of reaching at least 500 km an hour speed, and a climb rate of 6000 m in
02:27about 5 minutes.
02:28There was one thing, however, in the specifications that held back all the upcoming designs.
02:33And this was the requirement of using air-cooled radial engines.
02:37This choice can be traced back to a 1932 directive, which instructed manufacturers to prioritize
02:43this type of engines over the inline liquid-cooled ones, which were deemed too fragile and unreliable at the time.
02:50And as it turned out, this decision hampered Italian aircraft development for quite a while.
02:56Most of the Italian aircraft manufacturers entered designs for this new competition,
03:01and some of these aircraft became the foundations of a whole family of fighters.
03:06Umbra entered their AUT-18 design.
03:10IMAN sent in their RO-51 proposal.
03:14Caproni their Vizzola F-5.
03:17But the most successful and well-known ones were maybe the Fiat G-50 and the Maki MC-200.
03:24You might notice we didn't mention the Reggiane aircraft on the list.
03:28That is because the work on this design only started in 1938, after the ministry initiated the
03:35so-called Program R, aimed to modernize the Italian Air Force.
03:39Most of the fighters considered in this program were already in the prototype phase,
03:44following the 1936 competition.
03:46The Reggiane design was the only one directly developed for this 1938 goal.
03:53The first original design of the company, the progress on it was fast.
03:59As the designers Roberto Longhi and Antonio Alessio used the experience,
04:03Longhi picked up working in the United States.
04:06This explains the shape of the aircraft, and its resemblance to the Seversky P-35.
04:13The prototype was built in just about seven months,
04:15and already made its maiden flight in May 1939.
04:20The new plane was 7.99 meters long, with a wingspan of 11 meters.
04:26It featured a very streamlined fuselage and elliptical wings, which also housed a few cells.
04:31The fighter featured a 985 horsepower Piaggio engine, and during the trials managed to reach
04:38514 kilometers an hour speed, a climb rate of 6,000 meters in 6 and a half minutes,
04:44and had a range of 1,040 kilometers.
04:48Its armament, in line with other Italian designs of the time, consisted of two 12.7 millimeter machine guns.
04:56In August the same year, it was delivered to Guidonia for evaluation.
05:00Since it was designed two years later, the new plane showed better aerodynamic efficiency than its rivals.
05:06And during the test flights, it outperformed most other designs.
05:09Not just other Italian fighters, like the MC-200, but even the German Messerschmitt Bf 109.
05:16But the design was not without faults.
05:19Despite its great performance, the lack of structure, strength, and vulnerable wing-mounted fuel tanks,
05:24in the end, led to the rejection of the type.
05:27Though originally, during the test flights, a contract for manufacturing 200 units of the type was laid out,
05:33the negative technical reports resulted in the cancellation of the planned order.
05:38Though the type was rejected, and only a handful of these models were used by the Italian Air Force,
05:43this was not the end of the design.
05:46The government authorized the type to be sold to international customers, and several countries showed interest.
05:58The British government ordered 300 units in December 1939, but this order was understandably
06:04cancelled when Italy entered the war in 1940 on the German side.
06:09The Hungarian government also ordered 70 units, and later even acquired the license to build the type
06:14themselves.
06:16These mostly served on the Eastern Front, and in defense roles, until they were replaced by German Bf 109s
06:22from 1942.
06:24The Regia Marina also experimented with the type, and developed a catapult-launched version,
06:29the Re 2000 Cat.
06:31These were converted from planes seized from foreign orders, and they were used on the Littorio-class
06:36battleships, Italia, Roma, and Vittorio Veneto.
06:41Though the Red Gena fighter had some use in various roles, and had international orders,
06:46a newer type was soon developed based on this aircraft to overcome its deficiencies.
06:51And that was the RE 2001 Falco II.
07:01The RE 2000, apart from the structural weakness and unprotected fuel tanks, had another weakness,
07:07which it shared with most contemporary Italian fighter designs.
07:10The underpowered air-cooled radial engine, which hampered its performance.
07:16Though the Italians put considerable efforts to develop more advanced in-line engines,
07:20like the Fiat A38, but their development was troublesome and slow.
07:25So in 1939, the authorities decided it would be easier to purchase the license,
07:30to build the German Daimler DB601 engines.
07:33The license deal happened at the same time as the evaluation of the RE 2000,
07:38and Reggiana was instructed to redesign the type to accommodate the new powerful in-line engine,
07:43built under license by Alfa Romeo.
07:47The redesign of the type was mainly focused on installing the new engine,
07:51though the fuselage also became a bit more sleek and a bit longer.
07:55The tail, wings, landing gear, cockpit, and overall construction of the type was mostly unchanged.
08:03As we can see on the comparison pictures, the new design was really just a modification of its predecessor.
08:09In that sense, the redesign followed the same steps as other Italian fighter families of the time,
08:15which all followed the same principle of modifying earlier designs,
08:19to accommodate the stronger German in-line engines.
08:22Like the Machi MC 200 and MC 202.
08:28Retaining most of the earlier design resulted in very quick progress on the new aircraft,
08:33and the prototype of the new fighter, designated RE 2001 Falko II,
08:38was already finished in July 1940, and made its first flight the same month.
08:43After the initial test flights, the plane was transferred to Guidonia for evaluation in August.
08:49The test flights showed good improvements,
08:51as the new, more powerful engine helped the plane to reach 536 km on hour speed,
08:56but it kept its great maneuverability.
08:59The evaluation was a success for the new fighter,
09:02but the ministry requested a redesign on the wing and fuel tanks.
09:06Further changes were made by installing a solid fairing on the back of the cockpit,
09:10and the installation of two wing-mounted 7.7 mm machine guns,
09:14in addition to the 12.7 mm ones in the engine cowlings.
09:19The new wings now featured a free-spart design with armored fuel tanks,
09:22contrary to the failed original design of the RE 2000 model.
09:27The promising results earned a contract for Reggiane in October to deliver 200 aircraft,
09:32and additional 150 units were ordered to be built by Caproni.
09:37The first pre-production variant was delivered in May 1941,
09:41and the first production model in September the same year.
09:44But the production of the new aircraft was hampered by several factors.
09:48The Reggiane factory and the size of the workforce was insufficient,
09:52and had to be scaled up for the serial production.
09:55Deliveries of the license-built Alfa Romeo engines were also slow than expected.
10:00By the end of 1941, only 10 pre-production aircraft and 27 production units were finished.
10:07The engine production actually never really managed to catch up to the number of airframes.
10:12So there were plans to test other engine types, as well as different variations of the fighter.
10:17So let's take a look at those now.
10:26The RE 2001 was the original prototype. Two units were built.
10:32During testing a new low drag wing was designed, incorporating the radiators,
10:36and it was installed on the first prototype, creating the RE 2001 bis variant.
10:42Though the results were promising, in the end this modification was not approved.
10:48The so-called RE 2001 Zero series were the 10 pre-production aircraft built to speed up the service trials.
10:56The RE 2001 series 1 was the first production run of 100 units.
11:0339 of them were built as RE 2001 CB fighter bomber variants, featuring a bomb rack with the capability to
11:10carry a 250 kg bomb.
11:13Two were modified for catapult launch trials, and 12 units were built with arrest or hooks,
11:18for testing the possibility of using the type as a carrier based fighter on the planned Aquila aircraft carrier.
11:25Though as we know, in the end this carrier was never finished, another 50 planes were ordered from these carrier
11:31based variants.
11:36These already differed from the basic design in the installation of the arrestor hook and the catapult launch capabilities.
11:43As the progress on the planned aircraft carrier was extremely slow, the ordered 50 series 2 aircraft was finished as
11:50night fighter variants,
11:51under the designation RE 2001 CN, or series 3.
11:56These featured exhaust flame dampers, and carried two 20 mm cannons in under-wing gondolas.
12:02And to save weight, the wing-mounted 7.7 mm machine guns were removed.
12:08Later, another 50 units of the night fighter variants were ordered, but only 34 of them were finished before the
12:14armistice.
12:16The RE 2001 GV models were a small batch from the fighter bomber variants,
12:21modified with reinforced fuselage to carry a single 640 kg bomb.
12:28The RE 2001 G was an experimental variant, modified to carry a single 600 kg torpedo.
12:37And finally, the RE 2001 Delta was an experimental variant to work around the slow deliveries of the Alfa Romeo
12:44engines.
12:45This variant used a Nizotta Fraschini Delta RC16 engine.
12:50Though this engine was available in numbers, its low output of only 840 horsepower resulted in lower performance.
12:57And this variant only managed to reach a top speed of 523 km an hour.
13:02And its climb rate was much worse than the original designs.
13:13The RE 2001 was 8.36 meters long, with a wingspan of 11 meters.
13:20It had an empty weight of 2495 kg and a maximum take-off weight of 3280 kg.
13:31The plane was powered by an Alfa Romeo RA1000 RC41 liquid-cooled engine,
13:36which was the license-built version of the Daimler DB601, delivering 1160 horsepower.
13:44With this engine it could reach a top speed of 542 km an hour and a cruise speed of around
13:51400 km an hour.
13:54The service ceiling of the fighter was 11.000 meters and it had a combat range of 1.100 km.
14:03Its armament consisted of two 12.7 mm machine guns in the engine cowlings and two 7.7 mm machine
14:11guns in the wings.
14:13Additionally, the fighter bomber variants could carry either a 250 kg or the modified variants a 640 kg bomb.
14:30The first RE 2001 production variants started to arrive to the units in late 1941.
14:36The second Gruppo was the first unit to receive them, but the type only started to fly combat missions from
14:42May 1942 over Malta.
14:45Flying missions over the Mediterranean, the Italian pilots mainly faced hurricanes and Spitfires.
14:50The new Reggiana fighters were more than a match for the British planes, though like most Italian fighters,
14:55they were slower than their opponents.
14:58During the spring the Italians clashed with the Allied pilots numerous times, with losses on both sides.
15:03And as experience showed, the Reggiana fighters at low and medium altitudes were a match even for the Spitfire 5,
15:09though at higher altitudes they were at a disadvantage.
15:13The first RE 2001 CB variants were received by the end of June,
15:18and these fighter bomber variants also started to fly missions against Malta in late 1942.
15:25The modified RE 2001 GV models participated in the attack against HMS Victorious during Operation Pedestal,
15:33carrying 640 kg bombs.
15:35Though apparently one of them scored a hit on the carrier, the bomb failed to explode.
15:40The Italian fighter squadrons were gradually pulled back as the Allied forces gained advantage,
15:45and by mid-1943 all of the Reggiana fighters were ordered to the defence of the Italian mainland.
15:52But the slow production resulted in a limited number built from these fighters,
15:56so despite their flying qualities, they didn't have a great impact on the events.
16:01By September 1943, when Italy signed the armistice, 73 of these fighters were in service,
16:07but only 33 of those were flyable.
16:10And the armistice also meant the end of the production for the type,
16:13with just 237 units built altogether.
16:17The surviving planes still flew missions on the Allied side until May 1944,
16:22when all the remaining ones were assigned to training schools.
16:28The Reggiana RE 2000 and 2001 were some of the most capable Italian fighters of World War II,
16:34but their slow production limited their numbers,
16:37so they didn't have any meaningful impact on the outcome of the war.
16:43Hope you guys enjoyed this video.
16:45Please leave a like, subscribe to my channel,
16:47and in the comments let me know if there's any interesting events or vehicles you'd like to see.
Comments